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What’s On Tuesday

11 A.M. (Sundance) RAN (1985) In his masterwork inspired by Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” the Japanese director Akira Kurosawa tells the story of Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai), an exhausted 70-year-old warlord who wants to turn the vast dominion acquired through 50 years of bloodshed over to his three sons, on whose kindness he will then depend. The two older sons agree to their father’s terms and swear loyalty to him and to each other. But when the youngest argues that by dividing the lands, Hidetora is creating conditions that will lead to disaster, his father sends him into exile. At the same time, the wife (Mieko Harada, above) of his oldest son — the daughter of a lord conquered by Hidetora — encourages her husband to humiliate his father so he can assume control of the family in his own name. “Though big in physical scope and of a beauty that suggests a kind of drunken, barbaric lyricism, ‘Ran’ has the terrible logic and clarity of a morality tale seen in tight close-up, of a myth that, while being utterly specific and particular in its time and place, remains ageless, infinitely adaptable,” Vincent Canby wrote in The New York Times.

8 P.M. (ABC) EXTREME WEIGHT LOSS The trainer Chris Powell works with Jason, 35, and Rachel, 34 — his first husband-and-wife team. High school sweethearts from Michigan with 5-year-old twins, the couple seem to have an idyllic life. But during their first workout together, Mr. Powell realizes that Jason, who weighs in at 362 pounds, has agreed to the program only to please Rachel, who tips the scale at 290, and that the transformation process could destroy their marriage. His motivation: a trip to New York and the Empire State Building, where Jason proposed to Rachel 13 years earlier, if they can reach their six-month goal.

8 P.M. (TMC) W. (2008) Josh Brolin, left, stars in this biography of President George W. Bush, directed by Oliver Stone. The cast includes Elizabeth Banks as Mr. Bush’s wife, Laura; Ellen Burstyn as his mother, Barbara; James Cromwell as his father, former President George H. W. Bush; and Richard Dreyfuss as Vice President Dick Cheney. Writing in The Times, Manohla Dargis called the film queasily enjoyable. “Neither a pure (nor impure) sendup of the president nor a wholesale takedown, the film looks like a traditional biopic with all the usual trappings, including name actors in political drag,” she wrote.

9 P.M. (TLC) FAMILY S.O.S. WITH JO FROST In this Season 1 finale a mother must deal with her boyfriend’s infidelity, her daughter’s sexuality and learning to show some love toward her sons.

9 P.M. (TNT) RIZZOLI & ISLES As she investigates the murder of an overly enthusiastic journalism student, Jane (Angie Harmon) isn’t happy to learn that a former colleague (Amaury Nolasco) has returned to the Boston Police Department as a new lieutenant in the drug unit. In “Perception,” at 10, Pierce (Eric McCormack) and Moretti (Rachael Leigh Cook) delve into the disappearance of a man whose wife says he was abducted by aliens.

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9:35 P.M. (Showtime 2) THE WORLD ACCORDING TO DICK CHENEY (2013) R. J. Cutler and Greg Finton chronicle the life of the former vice president, from early adulthood — when, by the age of 22, he was an itinerant electrical lineman with a drinking problem and a growing arrest record who had flunked out of Yale twice — to his role as one of the most polarizing political figures in recent history. Toward the end of his second term, President George W. Bush told aides that he didn’t want any more visits or telephone calls from Mr. Cheney, above, who had once been among his closest advisers. Still, Mr. Cheney makes no apologies. “If I had to do it over again, I’d do it in a minute,” he says without hesitation.

10:30 P.M. (BET) BEING MARY JANE (2013) Mary Jane Paul (Gabrielle Union) would seem to have it all: beauty, independence and a successful job as a television news anchor. Everything, that is, except for love and a family that can take care of itself. Richard Roundtree and Margaret Avery lead the cast of this movie — the pilot for a series making its debut in January — from the husband-and-wife producing team of Salim and Mara Brock Akil. The film has its premiere after the midseason return of their series “The Game,” at 10.